Thursday, November 18, 2010

An acquaintance recently responded to a condolences email by noting the death of a mother-in-law by writing that, since the woman had been bedridden and under constant nursing care for five years, her passing was a “blessing.”

My father’s response, in private, to someone who had said my mother “was better off” after her death from effects of Parkinson’s disease was “How can she be better off? She’s dead.”

It’s somehow, (or obviously), easier to pass the blessings and better offs over to the deceased than to admit that the survivors are the ones who benefit from a final moment of life, not the dead.